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Business Shapers: Annabel Karmel

A mother of three, Annabel’s books on children's nutrition and healthy recipes have sold over 4 million copies worldwide. She presented her own show on CITV in 2011, Annabel's Kitchen, which was supported by Procter and Gamble.

Transcript

Business Shapers: Annabel Karmel

Annabel Karmel

Bestselling Author on Baby Food & Nutrition

Business Shapers from Mishcon de Reya

In association with Jazz FM’s Jazz Shapers

I always wanted to have a daughter and I was so happy when I gave birth to a little girl called Natasha and then one day when she was about three months old I went into her room and she didn’t look quite right and five days later she died and my whole world collapsed, it was the most horrific thing. It changed my life completely.

Well I then got pregnant I had another child, Nicholas so this is the catalyst that got me writing the book because he was the world’s worst eater. So I was making all of these recipes for Nicholas and I was giving them out to my friends and everybody would say ‘what else have you got, that’s really good’ And then they said to me after a few weeks ‘you should write a book about feeding children, your recipes are fantastic’. Eventually I worked with Great Ormond Street, The Institute for Child Health, Paediatricians around the country and I wrote The Complete Baby & Toddler Meal Planner. It was published in 1991 so last year was the 20th anniversary, it sold out within three months. This book is the sixth bestselling book in entire country of all books, it out sells Shakespeare.

And then I wasn’t terribly proactive about my career but you know companies like Boots came to me and said would I do a range with them which I did and it was very successful. I did a range with Marks and Spencer’s, I developed the Marks and Spencer’s children’s food range. But I kind of thought well all these people are like you know asking me to do things, maybe, maybe I could do my own range with my name on it. So I developed this range which we launched about four years ago and it was first sold in Sainsbury’s and now it’s in practically all the supermarkets and it’s sold very, very well, we’ve sold millions and millions of meals.

You’ve always got to have a positive outlook. I can do this, I will do this, I believe in it, I believe this is right for people, but do your research. We do a huge amount of research before we would launch anything. We test recipes out on children, mothers, hundreds and hundreds of children so that you know, you almost know you are on the right track before it’s on the supermarket shelf.